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of the standard Dell laptop. The old days of bulky, overweight Dell notebooks may be coming to a close in 2008. Today Dell announced their latest addition to the Inspiron family of notebooks, the 15.4-inch Inspiron 1525. We are happy to have a pre-production unit to review, and this sleek successor to the Inspiron 1520 might just surprise you.

Our pre-production Inspiron 1525 is equipped with the following specs:

Build and design Dell received some much needed attention in 2007 with the introduction of the sleek, high performance XPS M1330 and XPS M1530 notebooks. Although these more expensive notebooks in the Dell lineup were praised for their looks and low weight, the Dell Inspiron 1520 was criticized for being yet another bulky and unattractive laptop. Dell listened closely to this criticism when they designed the new Inspiron 1525. The Inspiron 1525 is in fact 25% smaller, 30% slimmer and almost half a pound lighter than the Inspiron 1520.

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In addition to the eight color options available on other Inspiron notebooks, the 1525 offers four new patterns. These designs are inlaid molds so there's no risk of the design coming off.

Although I wasn't a huge fan of the glossy inlaid "Commotion Pattern" design on our pre-production Inspiron 1525, I must say it looks flawless. I was highly critical of the paint application on the Inspiron 1420, 1520, and 1720 because the paint has questionable durability. The new glossy lid designs might be a magnet for fingerprints, but it certainly looks more durable than the old Inspiron paint jobs.

Screen Display options for the Inspiron 1525 include a matte finish 15.4" Widescreen XGA (1280 x 800), a 15.4" Widescreen XGA (1280 x 800) with TruleLife (glossy finish), or a 15.4" "high resolution" (1440 x 900) glossy widescreen display. On the surface the lack of higher resolutions is a serious flaw in the design of the 1525. In truth, the overwhelming majority of "average" notebook users will think the WXGA resolution looks stunning.

The screen on our pre-production unit looks flawless from straight on and the horizontal viewing angles are great. Upper vertical viewing angles are good, but colors did begin to invert at lower viewing angles when the screen is tilted back.

Keyboard, touchpad and media controls The keyboard on the Inspiron 1525 is fairly similar to the 1520. The keyboard is firm with virtually no flex and the keys have excellent travel and cushion.

The touchpad surface utilizes the new design that is integrated with the palm rest surface. The only separation between the palm rests and the touchpad is the indented area above the touchpad buttons. The touchpad buttons have excellent travel and cushion, though I did feel like they made a bit too much of a "clicking" sound when pressed. The good news with the touchpad is that it's responsive, has dedicated scroll areas and the textured feel is good.

A series of touch-sensitive media buttons with blue LED backlights are located above the keyboard similar to the buttons on the XPS notebooks. One nice feature about the media buttons is that the blue LEDs only stay lit for a fraction of a second after being pressed, so they won't distract you by staying lit all the time. Another "interesting" feature of the media buttons is that the blue LEDs "pulse" back and forth for a few seconds during Windows startup not unlike KITT from the old Knight Rider TV series or a cylon from Battlestar Galactica.

Ports and features The port selection of the 1525 is resonably good for a notebook of this size. Here's a quick rundown of what you get:

The built-in HDMI is a very nice thing to have for those that want digital video output, S-Video and VGA are also there for the more old-fashioned approach to video output. The fact that the 1525 supports HDMI with integrated graphics is impressive ... though we didn't have the opportunity the test the limits of the HDMI output from the integrated X3100 graphics.

I was pleasantly surprised to find four USB ports on the 1525. I was a bit let down by the fact the similarly sized XPS M1530 only includes three USB ports. The fact that the 1525 packs four USB ports into a reasonably thin and light 15.4" notebook is worth praise.

Speakers The speaker quality was "acceptable" for a notebook without a built-in subwoofer. The speakers for the 1525 are located at the top of the keyboard area above the media buttons.

There's not much to write home about the speakers, they get loud enough with minimal distortion, but the sound is slightly tinny as is the case with nearly all laptop speakers. Just imagine listening to music from small speakers mounted inside a tin can and you'll have an idea about the built-in sound quality. On the brighter side, both audio out ports delivered crystal clear audio to my earbuds during the test period.

Performance and benchmarks One thing to notice is that the dedicated graphics card option available on the Inspiron 1520 is missing from the Inspiron 1525. The reasoning behind this is that Dell is pushing the XPS M1530 as the 15.4" notebook for those demanding higher-end graphics performance. The Inspiron 1525 is meant for a more mainstream buyer looking for good multimedia and productivity features from a notebook, and not cutting edge 3D performance.

Regardless, I would have liked for Dell to offer at least an entry-level nVidia 8400 GS 128MB dedicated graphics card option on the 1525. Sure, it might compete with a base configuration XPS M1530, but consumers like to have choices.

That being said, the Inspiron 1525 performed quite well during testing and this machine will meet or exceed the performance needs of most average (non-gaming) users.

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, the advantage of this program is that it is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, thereby giving more accurate benchmarking measurements than Super Pi.

Heat and noise The Inspiron 1525 does a reasonable job keeping heat under control. The system fan and heatsinks in the 1525 do a great job managing heat when the system is under load ... as we discovered when we ran multiple benchmarks back to back. Below are images with temperature readings listed in degrees Fahrenheit:

Unfortunately, noise was something of an issue with the fan on the 1525. The fan moved a significant amount of hot air but the noise was reasonably higher than what we hear on most current notebooks. When the fan is on low it isn't noticeable over background noise most of the time. However, when the fan was at the highest setting we did record the volume of the noise breaking the 60dB mark from about two inches away from the fan exhaust. Again, this was a pre-production review unit, so your mileage (or decibels) may vary.

Battery life The 6-cell 56WHr Li-Ion battery provides excellent battery life for the 1525. With Vista's power management running in "high performance" mode, screen brightness set to maximum and wireless on, the 6-cell battery delivered 2 hours and 53 minutes of battery life. We're certain that the 6-cell could deliver three and a half hours of life with the notebook set to "balanced" or "power saver" mode and the screen brightness turned down.

There is also an available 9-cell 85WHr Li-Ion battery for those users needing extended battery life. One thing to mention is that with the 9-cell battery in you get an overall larger dimension for the notebook as the 9-cell battery sticks out of the back of the notebook.

Conclusion Overall, the Dell Inspiron 1525 is an excellent budget notebook with good looks and solid performance. This isn't a gaming machine, but the 1525 can handle everyday computing tasks with ease ... and looks good while doing them.

In short, the Inspiron 1525 is exactly the notebook that the Inspiron 1520 should have been in the first place. Even though the 1525 is arriving a little late to the party we suspect it's going to be a very welcomed guest in many homes.

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